Blowup bears and cell phones?

October 29, 2004 6:46 AM

What do you get when you cross Big Urban Games (see also here) with semacodes? I'm not sure, but it seems to look like this. (via gizmodo)
posted by gwint (3 comments total)

Just because nobody has yet, I would like to say that this looks super rad.
posted by majcher at 10:23 AM on October 29, 2004

A good example of appropriate design. Embegging chips into everything to "make them smart" is overkill; it reminds me of the old canard that "smart" highways would be too expensive because of all the electronics required in the highway -- missing the point that what you really need to do is find a way to keep electronics out of it, so you don't have to replace them all the time. So you embed some cheap magnets in the road in patterns that a fast-moving sensor can perceive.

What would be really interesting to speculate about is people doing graffiti in this form -- you know it would happen, but what would it look like? That's the kind of question you can't get a good bead on before you see it in action...
posted by lodurr at 12:07 PM on October 29, 2004

I saw players and giant inflatable animals moving around downtown Seattle last Saturday but had no idea what was going on, since they only had the abstract logo on the front of their shirts and most of them had backpacks or jackets covering up the name of the game on the back.

Thanks for clearing up the mystery--wish I'd seen that site a week earlier so I might have played. It looks like fun.
posted by Inkslinger at 2:18 PM on October 29, 2004